After the US exhausted all meaningful economic and legal sanctions against Maduro and his inner circle, and despite threats that direction action or violence against Guido or his supporters would potentially result in military action...
Maduro black-bagged Guido's chief of staff at zero-dark-thirty this morning.
Quote:
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido said on Thursday intelligence agents had detained his chief of staff during a pre-... Tags: US, Venezuela, Weapon, Nicolás Maduro, Political News and Discussion, Reuters, Caracas, Maduro, Guido, Trump Pence, Juan Guaido

Venezuelan opposition leader said in a tweet Roberto Marrero was ‘kidnapped’ before dawn The Venezuelan opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, says intelligence agents have arrested his chief of staff following a pre-dawn raid, signalling that President Nicolás Maduro may be cracking down on the opposition’s challenge to his rule.Guaidó invoked the constitution in January to assume the interim presidency after declaring Maduro’s 2018 re-election a fraud, and has been recognised by dozens of western nat... Tags: Americas, World news, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Maduro, Juan Guaido, Guaido, Roberto Marrero

Venezuelan opposition leader says Roberto Marrero was ‘kidnapped’ before dawn The Venezuelan opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, has said intelligence agents arrested his chief of staff after a pre-dawn raid, signalling that President Nicolás Maduro may be cracking down on the opposition’s challenge to his rule.Guaidó invoked the constitution in January to assume the interim presidency after declaring Maduro’s 2018 re-election a fraud, and he has been recognised by dozens of western nations as the c... Tags: Americas, World news, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Maduro, Juan Guaido, Guaido, Roberto Marrero

Venezuelan intelligence officers Thursday arrested the chief of staff of Juan Guaido, the opposition leader recognized by the US and other countries as interim leader, Guaido and the opposition-ruled congress said on Twitter. Roberto Marrero was grabbed by SEBIN officers when they staged a pre-dawn raid on his Caracas home, according to Guaido and a recorded voice message by Marrero published on social media. The United States has repeatedly warned Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's governm... Tags: News, Washington, US, United States, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, State, Caracas, Marrero, Mike Pompeo, Juan Guaido, Guaido, Sebin, Roberto Marrero

Eight weeks ago, opposition leader Juan Guaido told a crowd that he's the rightful president, and not Nicolas Maduro. The U.S. agreed — as did many other countries. Yet Maduro is still in powe Tags: News, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Maduro, Juan Guaido

Venezuelan doctors have come under pressure from President Nicolas Maduro's government for trying to alert a visiting UN mission about the severe lack of hospital medicine and equipment, NGOs say. Venezuelan authorities say that US sanctions freezing $30 billion in assets have blocked imports of basic items including medicine. "They forcibly booted out the head of a medical school in Maracay (west of Caracas) and since then we haven't heard from her," said Jaime Lorenzo, executive director of ... Tags: News, US, Un, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Caracas, Maracay, Jaime Lorenzo

Members of the Venezuelan armed forces that abandon President Nicolas Maduro will keep their rank and be reinstated once a new government is in place, the opposition-controlled legislature said Tuesday. The announcement marked the latest offer from the National Assembly, headed by opposition leader and self-declared interim president Juan Guaido, to try to convince more military personnel to switch sides. Guaido, recognized by more than 50 countries as acting president, launched a challenge to... Tags: News, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, National Assembly, Maduro, Juan Guaido, Guaido

Last week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ordered the last of the US diplomats out of Venezuela, saying their presence was a “constraint” on US policy toward the country. The wording seemed intended to convey the idea that the US is about to launch military action to place a Washington-backed, self-appointed politician to the presidency. Was it just bluster, designed to intimidate? Or is the Trump Administration really about to invade another country that has neither attacked nor threatened the U... Tags: Congress, Opinion, Washington, Iraq, US, America, Sport, Syria, Soccer, United States, House, New York Times, House Of Representatives, New Zealand, Libya, Venezuela

A Venezuelan general who is under U.S. sanction for incompetent management of a state medicine program has fled to Colombia amid growing pressure on President Nicolas Maduro, two sources familiar with the matter said on Monday. The United States in 2018 sanctioned army General Carlos Rotondaro, former head of a government agency that provided medicine for chronic health conditions, as part of efforts to "highlight the economic mismanagement and endemic corruption" by Maduro's government. Tags: News, Colombia, United States, Nicolás Maduro, Maduro, Carlos Rotondaro

United States Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov are due to meet in Rome this week to discuss the situation in Venezuela, diplomats from the two countries said. Venezuela, a close ally of Moscow, is in political turmoil. The United States and many other Western countries back Juan Guaido, head of the opposition-controlled National Assembly who invoked the constitution in January to assume an interim presidency, while Russia sa... Tags: News, Russia, Rome, United States, Italy, Moscow, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, National Assembly, Sergei Ryabkov, Juan Guaido

It’s always when weapons are banned. Via Dave Hardy, this is an interesting read.
During 2012, Chávez’s approval rating reached 57% (higher than any point in time of Obama’s 2nd term approval ratings by a wide margin). Then he decided that it’s time to “disarm all citizens”.
The Venezuelan National Assembly in 2012 enacted the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law” with the explicit aim to “disarm all citizens”. However before the law took effect, Hugo Chávez passed away on March 5, 2... Tags: Law, Obama, Military, Gun Control, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Hugo Chavez, Chavez, Dave Hardy, Venezuelan National Assembly, Javier Vanegas

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is planning a "deep restructuring" of his government, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said on Sunday, as the country recovers from a prolonged blackout amid a power struggle with the opposition. "President @NicolasMaduro has asked the entire executive Cabinet to put their roles up for review in a deep restructuring of the methods and functions of the Bolivarian government, to protect the fatherland of Bolivar and Chavez from any threat," Rodriguez wrote on Twi... Tags: Science, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Cabinet, Maduro, Rodriguez, Chavez, Simon Bolivar, Delcy Rodriguez

Venezuela's self-proclaimed interim leader Juan Guaido began a tour of his country Saturday aimed at sparking a citizen's movement to pry President Nicolas Maduro from power. As Guaido, 35, kicked off his "operation freedom" in the northern city of Valencia, the pro-Maduro military staged the latest in a series of exercises. The drill focused on defending hydroelectric infrastructure from attack -- a reaction to a weeklong national blackout that Maduro blamed on US "sabotage" but experts said ... Tags: News, US, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Valencia, Maduro, Juan Guaido, Guaido

What caused a devastating five-day blackout in Venezuela? Two engineers with expertise in geospatial technologies believe the answer lies in images from a NASA weather satellite showing thermal activity, which they superimposed onto Google Earth, the AP reports:
Within hours of the attack, the government of embattled President Nicolas Maduro began accusing the U.S. of a cyberattack. Maduro has stuck to that narrative, saying hackers in the U.S. first shut down the Guri Dam and then delivered sev... Tags: Tech, Ap, Nasa, Venezuela, Google Earth, Associated Press, Nicolás Maduro, Caracas, Maduro, José Aguilar

Opinion
Maduro Must Go
USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- There is one simple answer to the humanitarian disaster in Venezuela: The dictator Nicolás Maduro and his corrupt, violent, repressive regime must go.
It is vital that the United States government understands that when it embraced the opposition leader, Juan Guaido, it set the full prestige of the United States behind the new reform effort and against the Cuban-Russian-Chinese-Iranian backed Maduro dictatorship.
Venezuela is part of the immediate... Tags: Usa, Guns, Putin, Washington, China, Russia, America, Ukraine, United States, Crimea, Venezuela, Republican Party, Nicolás Maduro, Panama, Newt Gingrich, Trump

Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro created a military unit on Friday charged with protecting basic installations and services such as electricity and water just over a week after the country was hit with a massive blackout. Maduro repeated his claim that the blackout, which lasted almost a week, was due to "successive attacks" against the country's major hydroelectric facility at Guri in Bolivar state, "directed" by US President Donald Trump's national security advisor John Bolton. Opposition ... Tags: News, US, Venezuela, Donald Trump, Nicolás Maduro, Bolivar, John Bolton, Maduro, Guri, Juan Guaido

New videos obtained by CNN provide chilling insight into a mystery drone attack against Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last year—the world's first known attempt to kill a head of state with a retail drone, purchased online and armed by hand with military grade explosives. Tags: News, Cnn, Stories, Nicolás Maduro

Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales, a supporter of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, said on Friday that European nations should support a dialogue within the country. Morales, who is on a visit to Greece, said meddling in the domestic affairs of another country never bodes well. "History has taught that there have been many interventions from the outside, such as the case of Libya and Iraq, and they never offered a solution", Morales said in translated comments after meeting Greek Pr... Tags: Science, Greece, Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Bolivia, Evo Morales, Morales

New videos obtained by CNN provide chilling insight into a mystery drone attack against Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last year—the world's first known attempt to kill a head of state with a retail drone, purchased online and armed by hand with military grade explosives. Tags: Cnn, Nicolás Maduro, Maduro

New videos obtained by CNN provide chilling insight into a mystery drone attack against Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last year—the world's first known attempt to kill a head of state with a retail drone, purchased online and armed by hand with military grade explosives. Tags: News, Cnn, Stories, Nicolás Maduro

New videos obtained by CNN provide chilling insight into a mystery drone attack against Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last year—the world's first known attempt to kill a head of state with a retail drone, purchased online and armed by hand with military grade explosives. Tags: News, Cnn, Stories, Nicolás Maduro

The United States is considering imposing financial sanctions that could prohibit Visa Inc , Mastercard Inc and other financial institutions from processing transactions in Venezuela, a senior Trump administration official said on Thursday. The move, which has not been finalized, would represent another step in tightening the financial noose on the government of President Nicolas Maduro and his supporters. The sanctions would be targeted at the elite and groups loyal to Maduro, including memb... Tags: Science, United States, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Trump, Maduro, Visa MasterCard, Visa Inc Mastercard Inc

All U.S. diplomats remaining in Venezuela left the country on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, amid a political crisis over the legitimacy of President Nicolas Maduro's 2018 re-election. "U.S. diplomats will now continue that mission from other locations where they will continue to help manage the flow of humanitarian assistance to the Venezuelan people and support the democratic actors bravely resisting tyranny," Pompeo said in a statement. A U.S. official said the diplomats wer... Tags: Science, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, State, Pompeo, Mike Pompeo

The OPEC nation suffered its worst blackout in history last week following technical problems that the government of President Nicolas Maduro called an act of U.S.-backed sabotage but critics dismissed as the result of incompetence. Rights groups Provea and the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict said via Twitter that three people were killed in the central state of Lara and one person was killed in the western state of Zulia. Alfredo Romero of rights group Foro Penal said at a news conf... Tags: Science, Opec, Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Lara, Alfredo Romero, Foro Penal, Provea, Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict